


stars

by moderndaycain



Category: Naruto
Genre: (sort of??? maybe??), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, a lot of canon dialogue because this focuses more on internal monologues, ok here we go, written at 2am with no beta oh god what am i doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:40:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moderndaycain/pseuds/moderndaycain
Summary: Kakashi thought that maybe he had just been looking for this the whole time - and he’d found it, the stars on earth; they’d just been hiding. Shooting stars, only there for a moment before they were lost to the darkness forever.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Nohara Rin, Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Obito, Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	1. spinning our heads full of stars

The first time Kakashi saw Obito’s sharingan, he really couldn't see anything clearly. 

The left half of his face is a mess of blood, and his brain couldn’t seem to decide if he didn’t feel anything at all or nothing but agonizing pain every time he moved. He could feel it when the knife slashed across his cheek and through his eye - the worst part was that it was still there, resting in its socket, but judging by the discomfort he was feeling it had probably been split up the middle. It would have to be entirely removed if he didn’t want it to bleed out from inside his head. The other eye was fine, but he kept squinting in agony and Kakashi could feel tears running down the side of his face, even though he _wasn’t_ crying, because a ninja should be able to take the pain and keep going. Through his blurred vision the world seemed to fade in and out - he could tell Obito was standing in front of him on the branch, but he couldn’t focus enough to make out his teammate’s expression. This was bad - the Iwa shinobi was still lurking, ready to close in… he had to fight to protect Obito, he needed to find Rin - 

He watched Obito swing around, almost faster than his eye could track, and shove a kunai into thin air. But the air gasped in pain, and Kakashi watched as the blurry outline of the Iwa ninja faded into view as he fell to his knees, blood leaking from a deeply precise wound in his chest. Kakashi froze. The two ninja in front of him might have been talking, but Kakashi didn’t hear any of it. Obito protecting him this time, imagine that. _Thank you_ , he thought, and he meant it - even if he didn’t want to admit it, having his eye sliced open scared Kakashi more than almost anything to date, and he was still shaking slightly. He was in shock - if Obito hadn’t known when and where to move in a split second, they both would’ve died at the hands of an enemy they couldn’t see before they could blink. _And_ how _, first of all, did Obito even manage to react so fast and so precisely? He’s dead last, and maybe he’s got strength and guts every once in a while, but he couldn’t have done anything that impressive. What happened?_ Kakashi wondered if he missed something in his haze of pain.

And apparently he had, because for a moment he thought he really was on the verge of passing out and had started hallucinating as Obito turned back to face him. It looked like brilliant red stars had drifted down from the sky to land themselves on Obito’s face. They glowed in the shadows of the forest, and through his blurred vision (which was starting to clear up now as he blinked away the tears), Kakashi could faintly see them vibrating as if they were just containing a massive amount of energy, ready to be unleashed at any moment. As his good eye focused, he saw Obito staring back at him, breathing hard. His hands were shaking, and the one still clutching the kunai was stained with the blood of the fallen enemy, who was now slumped against the tree branch, dripping blood. Those red stars were still turning in place, the double tomoe making them seem almost hypnotic. Tears were building in his eyes, heightening the effect. 

Kakashi stared back up at his teammate, and in the face of the sharingan, he wanted to sit still and never look away. 

-

_So. Dead last got an upgrade._ Maybe now their sparring sessions would be more interesting, Kakashi thought when his brain found its way back to him (it felt like his consciousness had been absorbed by Obito’s eyes for a few moments, but now that they had receded into dark pools of black once again the effect had more or less worn off). The two of them had kept moving once they had gathered their wits, making their way towards Rin once Kakashi’s eye was bandaged enough for the time being. (Obito insisted on helping him, telling Kakashi to rest while Obito wiped the blood away as quickly as he could. At first Kakashi hadn’t protested, still focused on those fascinating red eyes, but eventually the two started arguing again when Kakashi kept trying to turn his head, causing Obito to drop the bandages, who then slapped Kakashi on the shoulder a few times (old habits die hard) for not sitting still. Urgency and the thought of Rin suffering at the hands of the other Iwa ninjas prompted them to work together, and eventually they were on the move again.)

Everything else seemed to happen so fast, Kakashi’s brain either deleted it from memory or smashed it into one big ball hastily labeled _Emotional Trauma_ . Finding the cave, finding Rin, fighting alongside Obito, the Earth jutsu that had brought the ceiling crashing in on them - all within a few horrible minutes. Kakashi could have made it out alright, he was the fastest of the three and Obito was ahead of him with Rin, but he still wasn’t used to his _fucking_ eye and ended up on the ground with another head injury from a falling rock he hadn’t seen coming. _This is it_ , he thought, _this is how I die. It’ll be okay, I died on a mission, Obito and Rin will make it out, I’ll get to see Dad again…_

His train of thought was cut short by a hand on his shoulder, throwing him across the rumbling floor. Whatever damage the rock had caused (probably a concussion, by the feel of it) his brain pushed aside. The earth was still closing in on them, and Kakashi was lying useless on the stone floor. He could tell he’d blacked out, but for minutes or hours, he wasn’t sure. Eventually his eye opened, slow and heavy, and at first his brain didn’t register what he was looking at. 

“... are you okay? Rin? Kakashi…?”

_Obito…_ Kakashi jumped up and felt the world spinning, but still managed to haul himself over to the boulder that rested a few feet away, on top of his friend, who was bleeding out beneath it. _Shit shit shit_ , he thought as he pressed up against the rock, trying to move it, but with each push it only seemed to get bigger. But he couldn’t stop, he could get Obito out, he could save his teammate, his friend, he _owed_ him that -

“That’s enough… it’s ok, Kakashi,” Obito choked out. “It looks like the end for me. The right side of my body’s been crushed, I can’t feel it…”

Kakashi looked down and all he could see was the left half of Obito’s face. The entire right half of his body was underneath the boulder, likely crushed beyond salvation. Blood was trickling from his mouth, and his lungs made a choked wheezing sound with every breath he took. But his eye was glowing with life in the dim and dusty remains of the cave, a star landed on earth and there to stay. Despite everything, he was still smiling.

Kakashi was drowning in a sea of red, and it made him want to cry.

Rin had stepped in behind him, crawling over to kneel beside Obito’s chest. Her face has morphed into a portrait of sadness that neither of them had ever seen on her, and tears were pooling in her eyes. She had always been so strong, and Kakashi felt something shatter inside of him as he watched his teammates break down. Obito was staring at Rin now with a regretful smile, which was interrupted by a violent cough. More blood landed on his face and stained the orange of his jacket. Kakashi was still pressed against the rock, his hands trembling, and in that moment he wanted nothing more than to break the world, to break _something_ , maybe even himself, for letting Obito jump in and save his life again. It wasn’t _fair_ that Kakashi had spent their entire childhood wallowing in an angsty mess of arrogance, taking it out on Obito for no reason other than that he was _passionate_ , even though he had lost just as much as Kakashi and still fell behind. He wanted to kick himself for thinking he was allowed to bully Obito for having a better outlook on life than he did, especially now that his seemed to be ending. 

“ _Damnit,”_ he shouted at nothing, pounding his fists against the ground. 

What right did he have to move on after this? _After this? Obito isn’t even dead yet and I’m already thinking only of myself. What kind of teammate am I?_ His first mission as a jonin, already failed. What kind of commander would let this happen? What kind of shinobi? _Would Dad hate me for this?_

“Hey, no… forget it,” Obito said softly. Kakashi hadn’t meant to voice his self-loathing, but apparently his dying teammate had heard it. Kakashi looked down at him.

The sharingan blazed into his mind, burned itself into his heart. _If I deserved to have anything good in this world I’d want it to be you_ , he didn’t think so much as feel. He wanted to grab that light in Obito’s eyes and hold it, keep it there and fan the flames so they would rise and never extinguish. He wanted to dive into it and never climb out, and if red stars were the last things he saw then so be it. He'd been so focused on Obito for so long, criticizing him and being a complete asshole for years, but now Kakashi thought that maybe he had just been looking for _this_ the whole time - and he’d found it, the stars on earth; they’d just been hiding. Shooting stars, only there for a moment before they were lost to the darkness forever.

Obito coughed again. “I’m the only one who didn’t… give you a present,” he said to Kakashi.

-

  
Evidently, the stars _were_ there to stay.


	2. didn't know what we had, but we knew it was ours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red stars over a stormy sea. What a nice view.

Kakashi was probably the second fastest ninja in the village at age 13. (No one had managed to surpass Namikaze Minato, and to be frank, no one was confident enough to try.) A young jonin, fighting on in the wake of death at lightning speed. Kakashi was a living, breathing storm - he still went on missions with Rin and Minato, but he was noticeably quieter and far more lethal. The sharingan in his left eye completed his chidori. Enemies fell in a heap of static and ozone at his feet before they could so much as blink, and Rin began adding towels to her medical packs to wipe the blood off Kakashi’s hands. 

As always, he would let her, staring silently as she worked. Rin was thankful for these moments. There were very few people Kakashi allowed to see him without his arrogant and angsty facade (and she knew that’s all it was - nothing more than a bad coping mechanism that no one knew how to approach; sometimes it made her feel pity, other times she felt straight up guilt for not knowing what to do). Rin was pretty sure she and Minato were the only people alive who had seen Kakashi without his mask since his father died, and she knew for a fact that no one else could hold his hands and gently scrub blood and gore off of them with his consent. He really was an ass to the other medical ninja (and everyone in general, especially if they invaded his personal space) sometimes, and with the amount of small injuries he sustained on the battlefield (more now than ever before), Rin didn’t think he’d still be alive if she hadn’t managed to somehow force her way into his comfort zone like this. 

Instead of seeing all the blood and the dark clouds in Kakashi’s eye, Rin wondered if Obito would have been that strong. With the sharingan, he and Kakashi could have finally had an even match - Obito might even have beaten him. They could have become Konoha’s most dangerous weapon, working together, but now Kakashi was like an unbalanced sword - swinging too far in the wrong directions and leaving a trail of destruction around him. 

Rin didn’t  _ like _ like Kakashi - not anymore. In their first few months as a team she’d been drawn to him, with his angsty attitude and formidable skills and undeniable good looks (she’d seen him without his mask, he  _ was _ good-looking, and even dark fabric couldn’t hide his jawline - which he was probably well aware of). But no, she wasn’t in love with him. She loved Obito too much for that. Obito had been her best friend, the brother she’d never had, for  _ years _ . He was always so passionate and cocky, going from cracking jokes to crying over a lost kitten in the span of two minutes. He made her laugh and smile more than anyone else by a long shot. Even in the midst of war he was a source of home and comfort to her. 

Being on Team Minato, Rin felt like a magnet being pulled in two directions. One was towards Kakashi, as mesmerizing as he was. The other was Obito, in all his fiery young glory. As much as she had wanted it to be so, she eventually learned that she couldn’t have both, the sole reason being that the two boys were physically incapable of being in close proximity to one another without tearing each other apart like stray dogs. That was what drove Rin’s heart back towards her best friend - Kakashi was amazing in the field (both Rin and Obito sometimes found themselves stopping conversation to watch Kakashi and Minato spar, catching the flickers of blue and yellow lightning as they danced with knives), but he was  _ such _ an asshole around Obito, who at the end of the day had been her friend first. She would defend him to the grave, if she had to (but she never got the chance). Of course, that didn’t mean Obito wasn’t an idiot for picking fights. They were both idiots, actually. Minato took her out for ramen with Kushina sometimes (or she’d just go with Kushina - apparently Minato wasn’t always the sharpest knife in the drawer either when it came to some things) and they would eat in peace and ignore the fact that their teammates were too stubborn to sit through an entire meal together.

When Obito died and it was just Rin and Kakashi left with Minato, things changed. Rin noticed them, even if she didn’t say anything. Minato was more serious than he had been before, and sometimes she caught him staring at the space where Obito would be when they were out on missions and had to set up camp for the night. His bright smiles and sky-blue eyes and everything that made him Minato seemed… dulled. Kushina would still watch their training sessions sometimes, but she wasn’t as talkative or interactive either. She and Minato were left to watch in sadness as the empty space weighed them down more and more with each passing day. 

Kakashi was… well, to everyone else, he was still just Kakashi. A living weapon with a cold demeanor and a fearsome skillset growing exponentially. He was becoming so focused and brutal when he fought that Rin had heard talk amongst the older shinobi of recruiting him to ANBU ( _ that _ scared her more than anything else), but Minato said not to worry about it. (She did.) That was just Kakashi - at least to the outside world. Rin and Minato and a couple of other people - she thought Gai had picked up on it too, because the boy had been making his best efforts to annoy the shit out of Kakashi, in a friendly way - Obito’s death was obviously turning him into something... dark. Something that made Rin scared for her friend, something that made her want the stupid war to end so Kakashi didn’t have another fight to throw himself into. But still she feared for him then, because without the war to keep him occupied the supposed threat of ANBU recruitment became very real. What Kakashi thought about all that nonsense, she didn’t really want to know.

Nobody had really noticed before, but 85% of what came out of Kakashi’s mouth had been directed at Obito. He was always a quiet kid, but usually he’d say his piece in an argument with no hesitation (or filter) whenever he felt the need. But there weren’t many arguments to be had anymore. He didn’t talk as much, now, and with his new eye making him even more deadly, he was easily one of the scariest leaf ninja outside of ANBU. He’d taken to wearing his hitai-ate so that it covered his left eye, and there was a long scar that stretched down below his mask, making him look wild and intimidating. Rin also knew that since the eye wasn’t his to begin with, Kakashi couldn’t deactivate the sharingan, so if he didn’t keep his eye closed, he’d probably die of chakra exhaustion eventually. She kept a closer watch on him than she had before.

Their training changed, too. Rin was a medical ninja, and still needed training in battle, but she knew she’d never be able to match Kakashi. Minato had started giving them separate training sessions on some days, and combined sessions for team-building on others. They were both improving, but for Rin, it was just a reminder that Obito had torn a hole in Team Minato that couldn’t be fixed. He balanced them out - even if he couldn’t reach Kakashi’s level while he was alive, he had enough spunky determination to spar with him anyway, so they both got the exercise and Rin - well, she got to practice medical jutsus on Obito at least once a day. She used to jokingly brag about being the best young medical kunoichi in the village due to her idiot teammate/test subject constantly getting hurt. Now things were off-balance, and even though she knew he only wanted what was best for the team, she wasn’t sure Minato quite knew what to do about it.

-

One day, on one of their missions together (escorting political documents to another village - nothing difficult, which was somewhat unusual; after all, they were Team Yellow Flash), Rin woke up in the middle of the night from a dream. It was about Obito again. She knew all three of them had nightmares about the Kannabi Bridge mission. Hers were usually about Obito dying right there in her arms, begging her to save him. She never could, and every time she watched the beautiful red light in his eyes go out.

(When he and Kakashi had walked into the cave, side by side, she hadn’t said anything so not to distract them, but Obito’s eyes were  _ fascinating _ . He had awakened his sharingan - something she’d read about with him when they were younger, curled up in the corner of the library. He’d always bragged about it, eagerly promising to be an amazing shinobi of the Uchiha clan and becoming the best sharingan user in Konoha. But now that he actually had that power, he wasn’t gloating. His eyes were still wet with tears, and she wondered what had caused them this time. (She remembered with a shiver how sharingan could be awakened and advanced by experiencing trauma.) 

The eyes she stared into for only a few minutes as the cave collapsed and he lay dying were beautiful pools of fiery light. They spun and jittered with contained energy, hypnotizing her. Kakashi seemed to be under a similar effect. Rin wondered if Obito knew how amazing he was, to have this power. Her heart was wrenched from her chest when he asked her to transplant his eye into Kakashi’s. He had accepted his sad fate, but she could see in his eye that he wasn’t ready to put out the newly awakened light just yet. So she did as he asked, Kakashi sitting in silence and clenching his fist in pain where it was resting on Obito’s chest. Obito smiled the whole time, unable to see them. He was proud of his team, immensely so. Rin was sobbing at that point, running her hand through his hair as more rocks crumbled down on them. Eventually they had to leave the cave before they too were crushed - Kakashi managed to regain enough composure to lead them out, but he and Rin both ended up leaning over the rocky hole in the ground, trying to catch a final glimpse of their friend’s sad smile. 

Afterwards, Kakashi slaughtered the remaining Iwa ninja with the crackle of chidori, and she watched Obito’s fire burn hot in his eye as he ripped through enemy after enemy.

Minato found them not long after, slumped together against a boulder. Kakashi was in shock and unresponsive. Rin couldn’t stop sobbing. It took Minato all of ten seconds to figure out what had happened and let his heart break. He sank to his knees and gathered the two of them in his arms, where they sat until the stars were in the sky, where they belonged.)

Rin woke up with the image of red fire in her mind. It didn’t help that she was facing the fire pit they had constructed for the night, meeting the dancing gaze of the low flames a few feet from her face. Across from her, Minato was sleeping soundly on his back, but his face lacked the usual relaxed smile she used to see while he rested. Kakashi was nowhere to be seen, but he usually took to the tree branches for his watch. Rin lay on the ground for a few minutes, trying to get back to sleep, but she couldn’t escape the blazing red that was imprinted in her memory. Sometimes she wondered if  _ she _ had awakened the sharingan, just for that moment - she didn’t think there was anything else in the world she could remember so clearly. She rolled onto her back, staring up at the stars. It had been cloudy at sunset, but bits and pieces of the sky had opened up above them, revealing thousands of tiny stars. Rin caught sight of one, brighter than all the others, and her gaze was drawn to its sharp red glow. It took her a moment to realize that she wasn’t just seeing it through the leaves, and for a moment her heart leapt to her throat. But as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw Kakashi’s silver hair, hanging freely over his face without his hitai-ate. The sharingan gleamed in the dark. He was sitting on a large branch above her, staring into the night sky. Knowing she wouldn’t be falling back asleep anytime soon anyway, Rin sat up and walked over to the tree, focusing her chakra in her feet as she began to climb up. She settled down next to Kakashi, and found that he had a great view of the sky from his perch amongst the leaves.

He didn’t look her way, but she’d known him long enough to catch unnoticeable reactions like the slight tilt of his head, indicating that he acknowledged her presence. He had his hitai-ate clutched in one hand, the other resting on his lap and slowly fidgeting with a kunai. Rin knew he wouldn’t want to talk, but that was fine, and she was content to sit in silence until it was Minato’s watch or one of them fell asleep. 

Eventually it was Kakashi who broke the silence. He whispered something, probably to himself, that Rin didn’t catch.

“What was that?” She asked quietly, cautious about disturbing the silence of the night.

“The Uchihas want my…” Kakashi started, staring at his hands. “The Uchihas want his eye back.”

Rin stared at him. “They  _ what? _ ”

He blinked and fidgeted some more, clenching and unclenching his hands around the hilt of the kunai. “Before we left, some of them came to my house and they… they said they’ve waited long enough, and that I have to give his eye back.”

Rin looked at him, her mouth agape.  _ How _ dare _ they? _ Obito gave Kakashi his eye as his  _ dying wish _ for fuck’s sakes. ‘Waited long enough’? Who are they to decide how long a person needs to grieve? Rin hated the Uchihas a little bit, and a bitter part of her always had. When Obito’s parents died he lived with his grandmother, but the rest of his family cast him out for being too emotional, too incompetent, too human. Even Mikoto and Fugaku, who Obito always claimed were kind to him, didn’t offer him a place in their family. And now, to demand something that wasn’t theirs for selfish reasons - Rin wanted to march all the way back to Konoha and give them a piece of her mind. 

“No. Absolutely not. It’s not theirs to take,” she said firmly. Kakashi looked down at the kunai in his hand. Rin tensed and reached over to place a hand around his. “And… Kakashi, I don’t think it’s yours to give.”

Kakashi looked her in the eyes then, one deep gray and the other a burning coal in the night. He was so sad, she could tell, and his jaw was firmly clenched beneath his mask. 

“I don’t… Rin, I can’t…” Kakashi started again, but sighed halfway through - an expression of sadness, exhaustion, and just how  _ done _ he was with the world taking things from him. “Why did he give it to me?”

Rin reached down and took the kunai from his hands, dropping it to the forest floor beneath them without breaking contact. She sighed and stared at her teammate, who was being soft and vulnerable and scared for once in his life, and thinking he wasn’t even allowed these few seconds. She could almost see the ice reforming in his eye, slowly enveloping the cold sea of emotion.

“Kakashi, you have no idea how much you meant to him,” Rin began. “He looked up to you, he would have walked to the ends of the earth if you took the first step. I know he acted like he hated you and said mean things sometimes, but… he loved all three of us, especially you, because you  _ listened _ to him. Even if you were rude about it you were still always listening. He knew that the sharingan was too beautiful to just die with him, and he knew that if anyone should have it, you should.”

“Then why didn’t he just offer it to you?” Kakashi replied. His voice was rough with emotion, an unusual and heartbreaking phenomenon for him. “You always loved him. You were always there for him. I hated him and he still -”

“Firstly, because neither of you hated each other,” Rin interrupted, her face set with certainty. “You said you did, but you were just being stupid and taking out all of your pain and anger on each other because you had nowhere else to put it. You and Obito were like two halves of a whole, Kakashi. Every day my heart breaks for him but… I think it’s almost poetic that he gave you his eye. That way you’re still always together. Secondly, you  _ were  _ missing an eye at the time. You’re kind of an idiot sometimes, Kakashi.”

Kakashi turned away to stare at the ground again, his cheeks tinged with color. Rin smiled. She’d meant what she said, every word of it.  _ Oh, what I would give for you to be alive, Obito. I could be your best friend again. We could be Team Minato. I could stand by you and Kakashi and watch you two become the greatest shinobi team Konoha has ever seen. _ She felt tears in her eyes, and she let go of Kakashi’s hand to brush them away. Somewhere nearby, an owl hooted.

“If I could, I’d take back everything I said to him,” Kakashi said after a while. “He didn’t deserve that.”

“No,” Rin agreed quietly. “Neither of you did. Idiots.”

“Don’t forget it was him who pushed me into the river that one time.”

“Maybe, but you pulled him in after you and sat on his shoulders. You almost drowned him, Kakashi.”

“No, I was trying to get out.  _ He _ almost drowned  _ me _ .”

Rin laughed at the bittersweet memories, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. She brushed them away and sniffled, which really didn’t do anything to stop more from falling. There was a smile on her face as she stared up at the moon. It was hard to tell sometimes, but judging by the angle of Kakashi’s eyes, he was smiling too. And looking fairly tired.

“You should close your eye,” Rin told him, wiping away the last of her tears. “You’re using too much chakra keeping it open like that.”

“No,” said Kakashi quietly. “I want him to be here.”

Rin’s smile faded, but she didn’t press the matter. Even Kakashi knew his limits, most of the time. But she understood - every time she saw Kakashi use the sharingan in a fight her heart beat a little faster, driven by the thought of Obito fighting there with them. The idea that he could see them now and hopefully be proud of his team. She couldn’t imagine what it must feel like for Kakashi - to her knowledge, she was the first person to transplant a sharingan successfully, but she still wondered how complete the connection was. Rin imagined sometimes that Obito  _ could _ see everything that was happening around them, and that he was cheering them on from wherever he was.  _ Such beautiful ghosts we have _ .

“I always thought his eyes looked like fire,” Rin said. “They burned so brightly. I hope I never see another Uchiha again. They’d just be disappointing.”

Kakashi huffed a laugh, looking back up into the sky. “Yeah. I think they’re more like stars.”

Rin thought about that for a moment. In the sea of inky blue and black above them, she spotted a red star, gleaming with energy and fire far beyond her reach. 

“Hm. I think you’re right.”

-

Her heart stopped beating. She felt it. Felt the muscle writhe and melt in the hand-held storm that was Kakashi’s chidori. Blood spurted from her mouth and chest, landing dark against his pale face.

One dark eye stared into hers, full of shock and confusion and fear. She watched the cold ocean within it stall for a moment, the waves in the dark iris stopping at their peaks just before crashing down.

Kakashi’s other eye, Obito’s eye, was spinning on her right, burning with pure energy and fire. Through the rain and mist it was glowing brighter than the sun. Because red stars are much larger, she recalled.

Red stars over a stormy sea. What a nice view. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the first two chapters were written at a reasonable time of day, like two days ago when i thought this was going to be another gen fic.
> 
> as you can probably tell, the following chapters were written in a state of late-night gay delirium, so obviously that idea was thrown out the door.
> 
> (also, if i ever decide to write more for this fandom it'll 100% be a Rin Lives au)


	3. it was all broken clockwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He didn’t really feel sad anymore, standing at their graves and talking. At first it was hard, but now… now it was routine. He hated that, just a little bit.

The world keeps turning.

Kakashi hadn’t seen Obito’s face in person for over a decade. Or Rin’s. Or Minato’s. He had that single precious photograph sitting on the shelf in his bedroom, with a pair of grumpy young boys, a smiling brown-haired girl, and a sensei who looked like the sun against the blue sky in the background. (He was sure that the other three members of his old team had more photos, but taking them had always just seemed like graverobbing to him.) There was even a giant carving on the cliff outside with Minato’s face on it. Kakashi was glad his window faced the forest instead. A large part of him didn’t want his teacher looking down on him, watching him grow up to become… whatever he was now. Even Kakashi wasn’t sure what that was.

He’d grown. A lot. Physically (he was now almost as tall as his father had been, and had gained more muscle mass, but still vaguely resembled a scarecrow - something Tenzo used to relentlessly make fun of him for) and mentally - he had somehow managed to drag himself out of the depressed sea he’d been swimming in for so long. Or rather, he was dragged out by a few stubbornly optimistic former classmates who had  _ literally _ demanded he be retired from ANBU. Kakashi wasn’t graced with the details of that little presentation, but he was pretty sure Asuma, Gai, and Kurenai were to blame for the three young shinobi he was now in charge of as well.

He’d been in ANBU for almost a decade before he retired (not by his request, but not wholly unappreciated either). It wasn’t something he liked to think or talk about. After Rin’s death, ANBU work became a catalyst for all his anger and regret and depression - and yes, he was officially diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and eventually anxiety by the time he was 16. Not that he knew what to do about that. ANBU was no different than working as a shinobi for him, but there were certainly some benefits: anonymity (which didn’t work very well unless he hid his hair and used the chidori sparingly), consistent work (which, Kakashi thought, saved him more than once from doing something very regretful), and no behavioral expectations. As a shinobi, people expected him to be heroic and noble, but in ANBU, he could forget that and only be what was necessary. It was too easy not to feel anything sometimes.

But returning to the standard jonin position didn’t make him miss any of those ‘benefits.’ Far from it, in fact. With less heavy baggage hanging over his shoulders (it was still there, but he’d gotten used to the weight), Kakashi found that he didn’t always hate everyone knowing who he was. Which was sort of inevitable, especially after the Uchiha Massacre. Konoha’s last sharingan user. Fancy that. (He used to wonder if that too was his fault - if he could have helped Itachi and stopped the teenager from ruining the lives of so many. He’d tried, when they were on a team together, but Itachi was like fog over a bottomless lake, impossible to see through. Kakashi had nightmares about the bloody corpses in the Uchiha compound, Obito’s usually among them. He didn’t use the sharingan for weeks afterwards.) They called him the Hero of the Sharingan, the Copy Ninja Kakashi. He thought Rin, Obito, and Minato would have been proud of him for that.

As for working consistently, he might have missed that a bit. To cope with… well, everything, Kakashi had quickly and dramatically become a workaholic (that’s what he liked to call himself - others might have said ‘masochist’ instead). Shinobi work wasn’t exactly steady unless there was a conflict between two villages, but he didn’t want that either. After leaving ANBU he’d spent all of his spare time visiting gravestones and talking to old ghosts, before someone (again, probably Gai or Asuma) shoved  _ Icha Icha _ into his hands and he dove into that mess. It was absolute shit and he never thought he’d be one for smutty romance novels, but it felt better to spend free time outside of a cemetery. He still avoided politics like the plague, after getting too involved with Danzo’s messes. When he was 25, somebody told Kakashi that he looked like the next best candidate for hokage. Kakashi took one look at  _ that _ and ran in the other direction. Still holding on to some childish stubbornness, he didn’t like to run from anything, but hokage?  _ Ten years ago these people were calling me ‘friend-killer.’ Five years ago I wasn’t allowed to speak to most of them. Hokage is the last thing I want to be. _

That was the first thing he talked to Minato about whenever he visited his grave, if he was thinking about it at the time. Kakashi knew it was depressing to have an organized list of what to say to his dead family, but it made him feel better. He didn’t really feel sad anymore, standing at their graves and talking. At first it was hard, but now… now it was routine. He hated that, just a little bit.

-

It was still early in the morning when he left his apartment. He had a mug of coffee in one hand, and an older volume of  _ Icha Icha _ in the other. At least his students were guaranteed to still be asleep at this hour - his general tardiness excuses revolved around him sleeping in (which was partially true, because on rainy days it was sometimes hard for him to find the motivation to get out of bed), and if any of them knew he was usually up by 7:00 that would all fall apart. There were few people wandering the streets as Kakashi strolled towards one of the outer gates, but most of them knew who he was and where he was going, so they didn’t bother him. It was early. 

The sun was rising fast, though, making the dew on the leaves shimmer in the morning light. Kakashi took a deep breath of clear air. Even through a layer of fabric it felt good. (It felt  _ too _ fresh without his mask now, he was so used to it.) Birds fluttered through the leaves as he passed under one of the shaded archways leading out of the village proper, following a cobbled path towards his destination. He’d been out here so many times, every stick and stone felt familiar. A bit of an unfair advantage, taking new students out here for their first training sessions. But Kakashi  _ had _ learned from his experiences, and he wasn’t about to let an arrogant Uchiha kid or a fired-up jinchuriki inflate their egos any more than they already had by going easy on them. At least Sakura (who could be just as cocky as the other two sometimes) showed some semblance of self-control. She reminded him of Rin - strong, stubborn, and not at all afraid to punch the boys in the shoulders when they were being idiots.

The dark, smooth face of the memorial stone glinted in the sun. Dragonflies rested on it’s warm surface, obscuring some of the names carved into it. Kakashi waved them off lazily and shoved his book into his back pocket. (He always made sure to bring it with him when he went to visit Obito, for no other reason than knowing that he would flip his shit if he could have seen it.) He still had the coffee mug in his hand, but it was mostly empty at this point. He set it on the ground at his feet, pleasantly surprised to find a few small white flowers sprouting in the dirt.

“Good morning,” he said. Even if someone else were out there, Kakashi wouldn’t have stopped talking to empty air. It was weird, but it was his routine. “I won’t talk for so long this time, but there’s a lot to say - I think you’d enjoy this. But Sakura will yell at me again if I’m late, which I still plan to be, so I’ll keep it short.”

Obito’s name didn’t say anything. 

“We just returned from our first A-rank,” he started. “An escort into the Land of Waves that turned out to be… more than we bargained for. I overused this eye of yours a few times, but the kids were impressive. They’ve grown a lot. Sasuke even unlocked his sharingan.”

Kakashi remembered what Rin said, years ago, about other Uchihas being disappointing in comparison to Obito when it came to the sharingan. (And, as he eventually learned, literally everything else.) When Itachi joined Team Ro in ANBU, for a few days Kakashi avoided him, telling himself that he was worried about Itachi being one of the Uchihas who still hated him for stealing their precious gift (although he was Fugaku’s son and a smart boy, so it wasn’t likely). Really, Kakashi just didn’t know what he would do if he saw the sharingan in action. He knew the kid had unlocked it, and even though they wore masks obscuring their faces, the red glow could still be seen from within. He still had a hard time looking at his own in the mirror - all he saw was Obito staring back at him, red stars and all. The mangekyo was the worst - it felt so purely  _ Obito _ , even more than the regular sharingan. Kakashi couldn’t explain it, even to himself. He avoided the subject altogether if he could. As it turned out, though, Itachi wasn’t a problem. His eyes were different in Obito’s in every conceivable way - they were deep and dark instead of piercing, glowing a soft maroon like spilled blood instead of stars. They were unnerving, but in a good way, at least by Kakashi’s standards, because they were unfamiliar. Still, he didn’t like them nearly as much as Obito’s.

Sasuke’s sharingan was different than his brother’s. That wasn’t surprising, though - Sasuke was something different in every aspect of his being. Even though he  _ painfully  _ resembled Kakashi when he was that age, the Uchiha boy still had an aura of importance to him that matched only Naruto’s. (Watching them attempt to take the bells from him that first day as a team, Kakashi had decided early on that he would take on the three of them, not because of their teamwork skills (which were abysmal at first) but because of their potential. All three of them were dripping with a potential that seemed otherworldly, almost making Kakashi believe in something like destiny. Naruto and Sasuke especially - those two would change the world.) 

Sasuke’s eyes held an immense amount of power, and they were far more similar to Obito’s than Kakashi was prepared for. Instead of Itachi’s deep crimsons and slow spirals, Sasuke’s eyes were lightning fast and bright red, tinged with something closer to pink. Their power and light was unmatched even by Kakashi’s eye - he noticed with sadness in his heart that as he grew older and used it more often, it had started to fade, ever so slightly. Maybe there was just something ethereal about newly-awakened sharingan.

“He’s growing fast. And he’s proud of his clan,” Kakashi continued. “I still can’t decide if you’d like him or not, though. He’s a lot like me when I was that age.”

He took a moment, trying to think of something more to say. He kept most of what he said to his ghosts in his head.

“Minato’s son is right on his heels. Naruto’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” he said with a laugh. “They named a bridge after him. That’ll go straight to his head.”

And Naruto would never stop talking about it, until Sakura hit him over the head one too many times or Sasuke did something that distracted him long enough to actually focus on the training. That was something Kakashi was proud of himself for - finding the easiest and most efficient training methods, which included giving Sakura a nudge in the direction of explaining absolutely everything (a boost for her confidence + less work for Kakashi) and pushing Sasuke on the right track so Naruto would focus all of his energy on doing the same in whatever strange way worked for him.

Kakashi really should not be in charge of these kids.

“How did Minato manage us?” He asked the air. “We were a mess. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but these three are even worse.

“Still… you’d get along with Naruto, I think. And Rin and Sakura would be a force to be reckoned with. I wish you could meet them. You always knew how to talk to people - I think you’d be better at this than me.”

A breeze rustled his hair, blowing the tiny white flowers back and forth as if they were dancing. Deciding it was time to head to the cemetery main and pay his respects to Rin and Sakumo, Kakashi took one last moment to just breath. His eye was closed against the breeze and one hand rested over Obito’s name, memorizing the old scores in the smooth stone.  _ I never know what to say anymore. ‘You’re the only real thing that’s kept me going for the last decade’? ‘I can’t sleep near anyone because I have violent nightmares about you and Rin’?  _

_ ‘If this world could give me one more good thing I’d want it to be you, here with me, helping me because I’m not sure I can do this on my own’? _

Some things he wouldn’t say out loud, even to thin air. 

“See you, Obito,” he said quietly, mostly to himself, as he turned around and started walking. He picked up his coffee mug and enjoyed the cool sunlight of the early morning.

-

_ There’s still rain falling in Amegakure. There’s always fucking rain falling in Amegakure. _

_ Zabuza’s dead now, apparently. Killed in a fight with ‘Kakashi of the Sharingan’ and the three little leaf genin under his wing. One of them is the nine-tails jinchuriki, that’s for certain; another one has the sharingan now. For how much longer, I wonder? _

_ I hate rain. It gives me a headache. Mokuton always works better in the rain, but _ fuck _ , sharingan absolutely does not. But maybe that’s just me. Did Kakashi have any problems in the Wave Country? I should have been there. Would have been, if Kisame had kept me up to date like he was supposed to. Itachi’s a distraction to him. Maybe I’ll go back to Konoha today, see what’s happening. It’s still morning, Kakashi might even be at the memorial stone still.  _

_ Still talking about me. How much he wishes I were there. Did he ever even like me? He certainly wouldn’t now, haha - imagine that. Kakashi leaving Konoha just to run away with me? We’d raze the world in less than a week.  _

_ Maybe I won’t go to Konoha. He gave me one hell of a migraine last week - overusing his sharingan  _ and _ fighting in the mist? It’s like he  _ wants _ me to die a slow, painful death. Honestly, can he really not feel the connection through the mangekyo, or is he just used to constant headaches from me standing in this fucking rain? _

_ Or maybe I’m getting impatient. Damn you, Madara, you old bag. Your plans take too long. Who the fuck has time for this. I want to spar with Kakashi, like we used to. I’d win this time. Does he even know what kamui is? Has he even been inside our dimension? I hope not, I put all of my good knives in there. _

Our  _ dimension. Oh Kakashi, I gave you that eye so you could see the world for me. Stop wallowing in your self-doubt and  _ see _ it. _

_ If you find me while you’re at it, well. We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. I’ll even bring matches. _

_ Fuck, I hate rain.  _

_ - _

In Konoha, a whirl of energy disturbed the air outside the memorial stone, bending the air over one of the nearby tree branches. Obito sat, hidden amongst the leaves, and scanned the clearing for any signs of life. He could sense Kakashi’s chakra, disappearing into the crowds of people back at the village, but it’s imprint remained at the foot of the stone. Obito jumped down and walked over. He understood why his former teammate would visit and talk when he was younger (they were all just _ kids _ ), but Kakashi was 26 now. Thirteen years of standing over graves and talking to people who wouldn’t answer.  _ What was it all for? _

Obito stood in silence for a moment, thinking to himself. He did that a lot, now - you’d think it’d slap some sense into him at some point, but he knew there was something dark in his heart that wouldn’t be vanquished so easily. Better to just accept that. Still, part of him missed being able to walk through the village without a mask, basking in the Konoha sunlight instead of hiding in the shadows. 

He looked down at his feet. Little white flowers were popping up around him.  _ Mokuton again. Great. _

_ Well then. Until next time, Bakashi. _

With a glow like a red star through the hole in his mask, he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if this is ooc i really wouldn't know what to say about that because honestly? so was kishimoto's writing, i'm working with what i have here


	4. at the coast, every star seemed so near

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He thought he knew what it felt like to have the world come crashing down on top of him. He was wrong.

Kakashi hadn’t seen Obito in 18 years.

18 years will change a person. 

The man standing in front of him _wasn’t_ Obito. He had his face, albeit deeply scarred on one side, and his piercing red eye, but it wasn’t him. The Obito that Kakashi remembered, whose image he’d held onto for so long, was buried deep down somewhere else. Lying under a heap of stone in Iwa or washed into the pools of a Kiri forest. This was a complete stranger, a terrorist leader trying to rewrite the world in a bloody conquest, preaching about the means to an end. Tobi, Madara - Kakashi wasn’t even sure who they were at this point. Something dark had spread itself over Obito’s heart and took away the light that had burned so brightly when he was a child.

Seeing the sharingan through Tobi’s mask just months ago was like an alarm in Kakashi’s brain - it was important, it was a mystery, it was _familiar_ , but he couldn’t fathom why it would be. It lingered heavily in the back of his mind for a long time afterwards. And then he thought it was Uchiha Madara he was fighting, and the fear for his village and his team smothered all doubt - it was just another bright sharingan, an ancient horror come back to haunt them.

(In retrospect though, there were so many other signs he should have seen. Even as far back as when he was in ANBU, he should have lingered in Amegakure, investigated the Bloody Mist just a bit more. He should have felt the eye fixed on the back of his head, noticed the masked man in the black cloak that lingered in the shadows of Konoha during the winter when there were fewer people on the streets. In the Land of Iron at the start of the war, where he was _so close_ and had no idea. All these years and Obito was right there, just out of reach. That’s what hurt Kakashi the most.)

He thought he knew what it felt like to have the world come crashing down on top of him. He was wrong. 

It felt like every shard of the white mask pierced through his heart as it shattered. He’d caught on just moments before, but nothing could have prepared him for the feeling of locking eyes with Obito again, seeing that red star on earth mirrored in his own. Scars had morphed the right side of his face into something monstrous, and his left eye was open and gleaming with the chilling light of the rinnegan. There were still some angles and lines on Obito’s face that were recognizable, even after all these years, but Kakashi couldn’t believe that this was what his old friend had become. Time didn’t stop then, but Kakashi did. His brain froze and he could feel his hands shaking. _This isn’t real_ , he thought, _Madara’s plan worked, this is the Infinite Tsukuyomi. He can’t be alive. Why - why didn’t he come back? Because I killed Rin?_

Obito’s eyes bore into him, and it felt like that day on the Kannabi Bridge mission all over again; Kakashi couldn’t look away. The fallen stars in their eyes shared a connection that he could _feel_ now, stronger than it had ever been before. He wanted to fall into it, block out everything except Obito, and burn away all the darkness that had infected his gaze until only that fiery light remained. 

Even after all these years, he didn’t consider his left eye _his_ . His eye had been cast aside in a pile of broken rocks years ago in exchange for Obito’s. It was always _Obito’s_ power, _Obito’s_ eyes, that Kakashi praised. Never his own. His mind was fragmenting in painful bursts at the thought of Obito standing in front of him now and not sharing the same light and power, instead drawing strength from a cleverly engineered prosthetic, a foreign rinnegan, and the darkness of Madara’s influence. For a long time, Kakashi thought the most terrible thing in the world had been Obito’s death, but somehow, this alternative was worse. 

_What does this mean for me? I can’t kill him. I have to kill him. This isn’t fucking fair._ Why _didn’t he just come back,_ why _didn’t I get the chance to make things right? This is my fault. All of this is my fault._

Obito’s eye swirled and glowed, and their dance began again.

-

There was a hole in Obito’s chest, in the same place Kakashi’s chidori had impaled Rin. 

They were alone now, and it was quiet, there in the Kamui dimension. Solid black walls rose around them, reaching into oblivion. White pinpricks like stars gleamed faintly in the illuminated darkness. The destruction of previous battles lay in heaps around them - kunai and bits of charred fabric standing out against the monochrome world. This was their legacy.

Kakashi stared at his arm where it was lodged in Obito’s chest, but the only pain he felt was the twinge of the deep scar in between his fingers from when he’d torn his hand on the fragments of Rin’s ribcage years ago. Obito felt more like a heavy fog coating his arm, weighing him down. Their eyes met and in the light of the crackling chidori, Obito’s scars looked ever more menacing. He had a wicked snarl on his face, and his eyes were glowing with a dark fire. 

_“I know everything, Kakashi.”_

Obito’s face was replaced by Rin, and Kakashi could almost _feel_ the blood and rain that splattered against his skin. Suddenly he was back in Kiri, a young shinobi carving a deep hole in the heart of his teammate. Rin’s face was tormented with pain, and blood seeped from her mouth. Kakashi tried to take a breath, but his lungs were empty.

_“I know that Rin chose her own death by having you pierce her with your Raikiri.”_

Obito’s voice echoed through his head. Rin coughed heavily, spraying blood on Kakashi’s face.

_“Rin had been kidnapped by the Village of the Mist and made into the jinchuriki of the sanbi. You managed to rescue her and take her back, but that was the mist’s plan in the first place. They even pretended to chase you to hurry you back to Konoha. They wanted to unleash the sanbi once Rin was back… and destroy the village.”_

The shouts of approaching Kiri nin rang in his ears, and Kakashi felt the sharp pain of bone piercing his skin as he tried removing his hand, as if it would fix the damage done.

_“Rin knew that, and when you attacked your pursuers with your Raikiri, she stepped in so that you’d hit her instead.”_

He could feel his left eye spinning, but this time there was no pain. The world seemed to slow down.

_“She decided to die by the hands of the one she loved to protect her village.”_

Blackness faded around Kakashi, and he recognized it again as their dark dimension. Obito stared at him, unblinking, with a look of cold hatred.

Years and years ago, when his friend lay dying at his feet, Kakashi had thought about diving into pools of red stars - _if that’s the last thing I see, then so be it._ Now they were there in front of him again, and he knew that if Obito killed him right there he would accept it. _I’d_ deserve _it. He’s right, I killed Rin, and it sent him down this dark path… All of this is my fault. I couldn’t stop the war, I couldn’t protect Rin. You were always right there, and I couldn’t even save you._

The right sharingan that bore into his left was alive with fire and energy, coiled into a lethal weapon drawn in a black spiral. Next to it the Rinnegan burned with a similar strength, but it was… cold. Like Kakashi was staring into the moon and stars. The rest of his body was in a natural state of panic, and he vaguely registered that he was hyperventilating - another panic attack drawn out by memories of Rin and stockpiled guilt. But Kakashi’s brain was frozen, still repeating _Obito, Obito, Obito_ , which it had been since his mask was destroyed and all was revealed to the world. The rest of his mind was like an empty pool, with the energy of Obito’s eyes burning bright at the bottom.

If Obito recognized Kakashi’s state of crisis for what it was, he didn’t point it out. If anything, the look in his eyes danced on the borders of regret. He stepped backward, away from Kakashi’s hand, and revealed a gaping hole where his heart would have been. 

“The shinobi system that created all this… the village… that’s what made me lose hope. This world. This _fake_ world,” Obito snarled, gesturing at the bleeding gap in his chest. “Look - there’s nothing in my heart! I don’t even feel pain! You don’t have to feel guilty, Kakashi. This windhole was opened by this _hell_ of a world.”

Kakashi felt like passing out. Or dying. Or one after the other. The shinobi world, everything he’d ever known, had torn his friend into a mess of broken parts like this? _Of course it did, because it did the same thing to me_ , he thought. 

“I had nothing but pain in my heart. What’s the point of it?” Obito’s gaze flickered between Kakashi and the open space of Kamui. “That’s why I got rid of everything.”  
  


_No_ , Kakashi wanted to say, because the Obito he thought he knew would never abandon the very _memory_ of everyone he’d ever loved in exchange for the empty promise of revision. He would never kill his sensei and start a war. _How can he do this?_ Kakashi hoped that wherever Rin was now, she couldn’t see them. 

“Haven’t you been suffering too, all this time?” Kakashi felt his nails dig into his palms as Obito continued. “In front of Rin’s grave? In front of my grave…?”

_So you were there, all this time? You watched me break down and devote myself to your memory, and you let me believe that that’s who you’d always be?_ The empty void in Kakashi’s heart began to burn. _What has the world done to you?_

“Kakashi… it’s okay,” Obito said, sounding tired, if anything. “You don’t have to suffer anymore. Rin is here. I like you, Kakashi.”

At that point, neither of them had enough heart left to break.

Images of young shinobi danced around Kakashi’s legs, orange goggles and soft brown hair glinting in the pale light. _“Your ideal me is here too,”_ said Rin, but it _wasn’t_ Rin. _“I’ll become Hokage!”_ The small Obito grinning up at him reminded him so much of Naruto, it hurt.

The grim reminder brought Kakashi’s mind back to reality for a moment, and he remembered the battle raging outside. If the Shinobi Alliance hadn’t already been devastated by the Ten-Tails, they might have been well on their way. _If we’re the last ones standing at the end of this, what will we do? We can’t go back. Obito… you’re too far gone. I can’t let you keep going. I’ll do this for Rin. I’ll die too if I have to._

“Obito, stop,” he said, his voice harsh and jagged. “Rin is dead. She can’t come back, no matter how much we want her to. I’m _sorry_ for everything that’s happened to us - it’s all my fault. But you can’t keep doing this. What you want isn’t possible.”

Obito glared back at him. “Don’t tell me what’s not possible, Kakashi,” he said bitterly. “I _am_ impossible.”

Kakashi wished things were better and he could have laughed at the statement. The young jonin in the back of his memories did, knowing that it would likely be the last time he could.

“You think you can fill the hole in your heart by just replacing everything with your ideal version, but it doesn’t work like that,” spat back Kakashi, finally having found his resolve amongst the debris in his head. “That’s what other people are meant to do. You may lose some, but you don’t have to be alone… I’ve always been here, Obito. I know I couldn’t save Rin, but if you let me, I can save you.”

At that Obito huffed a humorless laugh, glaring back at his friend-turned-enemy. He spread his hands wide, displaying the gorey hole in his chest.

“No, you can’t. I’m done with you saving me. I’m saving myself this time. I’ll save the world.”

“Is that what Rin would want? For you to bring everything else to an end just to replace her?”

“Don’t try and tell me what you think she wanted. She wanted _you_ and you were too fucking arrogant to see it. You could have been happy, but you chose to wallow in your guilt for me instead,” Obito snapped. He sounded genuinely mad this time, and it brought Kakashi back to the petty arguments they had in their youth. “Don’t act like either of us were really that important to you. You sank in your grief after we were dead and didn’t know what you had until it was gone, just like you always have. Don’t tell me I’m being selfish, Kakashi, not when you’ve let everyone around you die without trying to change it.”

Kakashi could feel a simmering anger building in his chest as well now. “Obito, I’m fighting your war - I’m facing you - that’s how I’m changing things! I cared so much about our team, and if I have to die to prevent history from repeating itself, then I will. Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura - the whole shinobi world… we can change it. It _wants_ to be changed now. Just… help me get there. I don’t blame you for this. I’ll still stand beside you, Obito.”

“You’ll stand beside me? What, as long as I’m on your side?” Obito shouted. “Like you did when we were young? You didn’t give a _damn_ about me until the last minute, and then felt sorry for yourself for years crying over my grave.”

Years on the battlefield led Kakashi forward as he spoke to counter Obito as he rushed in. They didn’t have time for this conversation - this was war. And Obito was _wrong_ , he was so wrong - he hadn’t heard the talks he’d had with Rin and Minato, didn’t know that in the end Rin had chosen Obito over Kakashi in her own way. Crying in the rain for Obito, pressed against the cold memorial stone - it was more than just guilt. _I grieved so much for what we could have had. For being too stubborn to try and take it._ Racing forward, the two of them met in the middle, burning with chakra. Kakashi’s Raikiri in Obito’s chest once again, and a large shuriken in his to match.

“Obito…” Kakashi said through gritted teeth. “Haven’t we had enough of this? I know I have. Let’s stop with the genjutsu.”

Obito’s illusion snarled and pulled away, fading into the darkness along with Kakashi’s. He still retained his fighting stance, looking ready to unleash the full extent of his arsenal. Kakashi raised his hand, his fingers moving to start the kumite, as if they were still in the Academy and this was a sparring session. _Sentiment. There’s no use for it anymore_ , he thought. But Obito still complied, his artificial arm raised in front of his chest. 

“Obito, I can help you,” Kakashi tried again. “I know I might be speaking for myself as well, but I don’t care - if this continues, your future is death.”

Obito’s glare deepened. “Come on.”

Their hands dropped again, and time seemed to slow. With Obito’s eye open and blazing with energy, Kakashi felt like he was walking through a dream world. He remembered their younger selves and the petty rivalries.

He blocked Obito as he advanced.

They were always unevenly matched, but that never bothered Kakashi. As kids, he just wanted to fight and enjoy it, which he always had with Obito. 

Kakashi ducked to avoid a spiral of hot flames from Obito’s Katon jutsu.

Obito once said that he didn’t like the sound of kunai when they clashed, and Kakashi never let him live it down. Obito stubbornly practiced with them for the next week, and it made their sparring even more exciting.

Metal scraped against metal and the two of them danced around each other.

Minato had always valued teamwork, and Kakashi remembered the soft smile on his teacher’s face whenever their training lessons stretched on for too long because Kakashi wasn’t ready to end the fights. _If he could only see us now. I’ll do better for Naruto. I promise that._

Finding an opening, Kakashi kicked Obito hard in the chest, sending him sprawling backwards across the smooth ground.

_I have to make it out of this. For my team. I’m sorry Obito but… they’re our future. The new generations… that’s our chance to make things better. Not Madara’s genjutsu. I wish you could have realized that._ He remembered the end of every match, where he would stand over Obito and hold out his hand, and Obito would take it. Their fight would be over, and they’d leave for the day knowing they’d return tomorrow for a rematch. _I don’t think you ever hated that,_ he thought. _I beat you every time but… I could see it in your eyes, you had so much energy, and I was always so ready to challenge it._

He sprang forward again with his kunai angled forward, crackling with charged blue lightning, and Obito sprang up to meet him. They collided in the middle with a spray of blood.

Kakashi felt the sharp burn of the black receiving rod as it pierced through his chest on the edge of his ribcage. The fabric of his mask was warm with blood. Obito jumped away, panting, and coughed up more of his lungs as Kakashi’s arm was ripped from his chest. The kunai had gone all the way through, and this time it wasn’t a genjutsu. He stumbled to the floor, landing hard on his back. They lay on the ground opposite each other, breathing heavily. The injuries Kakashi had sustained earlier were catching up to him, and the pain was making his brain foggy. He grabbed the end of the staff Obito had thrust at him and snapped it, ripping it out through the front with a gasp of pain. Obito clutched at his chest, where blood was rapidly pooling. He whipped his head up to glare at Kakashi with more force than before, his face contorting into a mess of lines and scarring. Blood stained the white material of his synthetic arm.

“It’s over… Obito,” Kakashi panted. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain as he pressed a hand to his side.

Obito started laughing, but it was humorless and chilling. More blood dripped from his mouth and onto the floor. 

“You might have won this fight,” he snarled. “But I won’t let you win the war.”

The sharingan began to turn in his eye, and Kakashi could only sit and watch as Obito vanished into a swirl of air. 

His ears were ringing. Whether it was from chakra exhaustion, pain, or just the silence of the Kamui dimension, he couldn’t tell. The darkness of the endless oblivion seemed to hang over him, pressing down on his shoulders. Blood was running through his fingers where they were pressed against the wound. _It’s on my right side. He could have pierced my heart and killed me, but he didn’t._

Obito was gone. Nothing Kakashi said had changed anything, and his old friend had left him alone again to find the end of whatever dark path they were walking. He sank to the floor, resting his forehead against the cool obsidian. His heart was beating in his chest, but his mind was staticky and he felt numb inside.

_Stars. I guess this is why they’re so far away. This is what it feels like to burn._

Obito’s sharingan twinged with a small force of chakra, and Kakashi knew that what he’d always thought had been a mere side effect of the transplant was actually just his old friend telling him ‘ _I’m alive, things are happening, and you’re not here_.’

_He still never understood. He watched me mourn him at his grave for years and maybe some of it was self-pity and guilt, but not all of it. Can you fall in love with someone after they’ve died? And if they’re still alive, what then? How many chances have I thrown away?_

_“Bakashi, you’re such an idiot,”_ said the smiling boy with goggles deep within his memory, emerging from a sea of glowing red. He lightly punched Kakashi in the shoulder, and tried to hide the grin on his face when a younger Kakashi hit him back.

  
And if you _could_ fall in love with a person only after they became no more than a ghost that didn’t exist, Kakashi would never know. He’d always been a bit too fast back then, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot of the dialogue in this chapter and the next is canon (ew), or at least paraphrased. you can tell i took some liberties, though, for sexy reasons


	5. and into the distance, forever it seems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was just like all those decades ago, when two boys faced each other in one of many mock battles before their sensei - there was a connection between them that stretched deeper than hand signs and tradition.

There was a new weight on Kakashi’s shoulders, and this time it was the physical burden of intense gravity in Kaguya’s dimension. The washed-out red light of the sky shone down on Team 7’s hunched forms as they struggled to regain their composure from the shift in space time.

Kakashi’s sense of reality had been ripped to shreds at the beginning of the long battle that was the Fourth Shinobi War, and as much as he tried to stay in the moment and remain composed, it seemed his brain could only register half the picture. Maybe it was his eye - despite Sakura and Naruto’s best efforts in restoring it, it still tingled from when Madara had ripped it from his skull. It was truly his eye, now - Obito regained both of his sharingan, and Kakashi was left with two powerless gray eyes that felt so  _ wrong _ . He no longer had the heightened visibility on his left side, throwing off his depth perception and making his movements out of balance. Things were moving much slower than he was used to, and his head felt empty without the constant thrum of Obito’s chakra embedded in the sharingan. So many years sharing a pair of eyes left Kakashi feeling… alone, even though Obito was alive and standing little over a dozen yards away. 

Sasuke and Naruto were hunched in between them, trying to recover from Kaguya’s relentless attacks. Sasuke was bloody and beaten and had his rinnegan squeezed tightly closed, while Naruto’s chakra flickered and danced like a bright yellow flame he was struggling to maintain. Kakashi could see the exhaustion in their movements, especially under the dimension’s intense weight. Kaguya seemed to be struggling as well - clearly the young shinobi were more of a match than she and the Black Zetsu had anticipated, and she was only just starting to adjust to the gravitational pull.

_ I have to do something to protect them. They fought her while Obito and Sakura did their part and what have I done? Without Obito’s eye I’m useless. I’m failing them. _

Kaguya’s menacing composure wavered as she raised her clawed hands, readying a burst of chakra. Bone staffs shot from her outstretched hands and flew towards Naruto and Sasuke.

_ They can’t move enough to dodge that - I have to  _ do _ something. If they die, this is the end. _

Kakashi tried to stand and move forwards, but he wasn’t quite adjusted to the dimension and only managed to stagger up, wincing under the weight. Across from him, he saw Obito tense out of the corner of his eye.

“Sasuke, dodge it!” Naruto yelled, using his momentum to throw himself onto his stomach, narrowly avoiding the shard of bone. Sasuke swore and did the same, landing hard on the jagged ground. 

They were still shaking, and from their position, wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to dodge a second time. Kakashi and Obito moved forward, crossing the distance as fast as they could despite their exhaustion. Kaguya scowled and shakily rose to her feet, readying another bone attack in her hands. Kakashi’s heart was beating loud and fast in his ears, and he pushed forward, moving as fast as he could towards his students. The effort was painful, and the uneven terrain made his steps wobbly.

_ I have to make it. I can’t let them be killed. It looks like I might have to die in this war, but if it’s for them, it’s okay. Anything to give them a chance to make things right. This team… they’re extraordinary with or without me. Rin, Minato, Obito… let them be our legacy.  _

His hand was stretched towards Sasuke as a last attempt to throw his momentum forward. Obito mirrored his position on Naruto’s other side, and for a second their eyes met across the battlefield. Despite the pale light around him, Obito’s eyes still burned like stars. The hatred that had been brewing in them was gone, and in its place Kakashi could see sadness, regret, and determination. 

_ With you is a good place to die _ , he thought. 

For a moment, it was almost as if his mind had been doused in a cool rain, flooding his thoughts and vision. He could still see Obito ahead of him, looking just as confused, and in between them - 

Rin was standing, holding their outstretched hands, pulling them forward. Her grip was solid and cool, and it was as if they really were the same team that had laughed and cried for each other as children once again. Kakashi felt himself move forward, as if she was really there and pulling them along, and the turbulence in his mind quieted.

He stood beside Obito, facing the enemy, watching the bone spear fly closer to his chest.  _ This is how it was meant to be. I’m ready for this. _ Everything was calm and quiet - he’d faced death before and walked away, but this felt different. It was a nicer ending - dying by his choice, defending his team and hopefully giving them a chance to save the world. Dying beside Obito.

_ Rin, dad… we’ll be there soon. We can be a team again. _

_ Our story is finally over, Obito. It wasn’t a happy ending, but… it is what it is. I hope you realize how much I still love you, before it’s all done. _

He didn’t see Obito staring at him, his eyes dripping with remorse and certainty. He didn’t acknowledge the air bending in front of him, until the impact he was bracing himself for never came. Movement flashed in the corner of his new eye, and he whipped his head around to watch Obito stagger from the impact of the bone to his stomach, his gaze still fixed on Kakashi. His eyes were slowing to a stop where they had been spinning with red light.  _ Kamui…? _ Obito winced and smiled at him sadly as the bone disintegrated, cracks forming in his skin where it had landed. The soft look in his eyes caught Kakashi off guard - it was the same look Obito had given him as he lay crushed beneath a boulder, having sacrificed everything for his fallen teammate.  _ This can’t be happening… not again. _

“Kakashi… You stay here. Don’t follow me.”

_ Not again. _

“No, Obito - it can’t just be you, we should both…” Kakashi could feel the world closing in on him once again, serenity and acceptance wiped from his mind altogether. “We still need your help. You can’t leave me again, I can’t do this without you.”

He didn’t care that Kaguya was rising to her feet again, or that his students watched Obito sacrifice himself in horror behind them. None of it seemed real anymore. Obito closed his eyes and smiled again. 

“Don’t worry about me, Bakashi. Focus on the enemy.”

Naruto managed to stand up, his eyes burning with pain and desperation. He placed a hand firmly on Obito’s shoulder, and Kakashi watched his golden chakra flicker, trying to halt the crumbling dust that was gradually spreading across Obito’s stomach. 

_ “It’s useless, Naruto,” _ said Black Zetsu from within Kaguya’s sleeve.  _ “There’s nothing you can do. He will rot like the garbage that he is.” _

Kakashi wanted to shatter everything, rip the enemy to shred and burn their ashes, but he couldn’t do much more than stare at Obito and listen to his heart beat in his ears, going through every memory and option in his head, trying to control the chaos around him. 

“Stop… Naruto, it’s right,” Obito said. He didn’t seem to be in pain, but his voice was low and tired. “Don’t waste your chakra on me.”   
  


_ “Why do you help him? He used to be your enemy. He’s killed so many of your friends.” _

Naruto snarled at the dripping black form, but still remained focused on channeling his chakra. 

_ “Then again… he betrayed us too. He’s just rubbish,”  _ it taunted.  _ “Hated by his allies and his enemies, no friends, no family to be sad for him. He’s all alone. There will be nothing left. He lost everything and he couldn’t take any of it back… he was just a pawn, and now he has no place in this world. All he ever did was fail. At least now he can die.” _

“Shut up, bastard!” Naruto shouted, burning with anger and power.

“Naruto, it’s right,” Obito repeated firmly. “This is how it’s meant to be.”

Sasuke, having been quiet the entire time, jumped around Kakashi and appeared next to Kaguya, having regained the power in his left eye. Kakashi felt the world shift around him again, and then they were standing in the goddess’ sacred dimension once again. Sasuke retreated and landed in front of them, letting the flames of his Susanoo build around him. He turned back towards his team with a cold look in his eyes that might have passed for consolidation if it hadn’t been so fiery. 

“Naruto, let’s go. I’ll be the decoy,” he said. “We can’t save him.”

Naruto’s expression was a conflicted mess, but he still gripped Obito’s shoulder. Obito lowered his head, his eyes still closed. Sasuke looked back again before unleashing the full power of the Susanoo, extending its clawed wings and rising into the air. The last members of the Uchiha clan shared one last look, but no words between them.  _ It is what it is _ .

“I’m going ahead,” Sasuke said before turning back to face Kaguya.

“Shit,” Naruto spat. “Shit!”

Obito turned so that Naruto could see his face, but his eyes remained focused on the air in front of him. “It’s ok, Naruto.” He paused, his eyes flickering over the ground. “Thank you. Fighting you allowed me to see things clearly. You’re a lot like me when I was young. I’m sorry things turned out this way, but… I had dreams like yours, and you made me remember that. Naruto, just… keep following your ninja way. Become Hokage, no matter what.”

His body was now crumbling to dusty pieces, landing on the ground in piles of ash. Behind him, Naruto had tears steaming in the corners of his eyes, but he had a small smile on his glowing face. Slowly, he removed his hand, and his chakra settled in a soft blaze around him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I will.”

Naruto leapt off after Sasuke, smiling at Obito one last time. Kakashi was still standing in the same position he’d been in when he’d jumped in to sacrifice himself for his students. His eyes were still fixed on Obito, on the cracks in his pale skin and the red eyes that burned brightly. Obito turned to look at him again, a sad smile painted on his face.

“I’m sorry, Bakashi,” he said. “Your story here isn’t over yet.”

_ Why do I never get to decide that for myself? _

“Obito, I - it’s not  _ my _ story anymore, it’s ours now. I can’t keep going without you,” Kakashi started, his voice coming out broken and quiet. “I never moved on, and you were still always there with me - you were supposed to see the world through my eyes.”

Obito laughed, and it shook a few more pieces of his chest loose, where they settled in an ashy pile at his feet. Kakashi took a step forward, wanting to grab Obito’s face and get lost in his eyes one last time, and would have if he weren’t afraid of it falling apart beneath his fingers. There was no more time for him to have regrets.

“You’re more than just memories, Kakashi. You’re still the best shinobi in Konoha, even if you had to walk on glass to get there.”

Kakashi shook his head, not knowing what else to say. 

“I’ve always been following you, but now it’s time for me to take a new path. We’ll see each other again eventually.” Obito’s sharingan swirled quietly - despite the fact that his body was all but a dusty pile of ashes, they still burned brightly. “I bet I could beat you again if we sparred in the afterlife.”

Kakashi felt Obito’s hand brush his, and dust crumbled into his palm. 

“Take your time, Kakashi,” Obito said with a final grin. “I’ll still be watching you. All of us will.”

Kakashi watched as the stars that had been burning for so long flickered until they were only blotches of light in his unblinking eyes. Ashes drifted softly in the air to rest in a pile on the ground, which continued to crumble until it joined with the otherworldly soil of Kaguya’s dimension. Kakashi stared straight ahead, his gray eyes glassy. His hand was still clenched around Obito’s ashes, staining the fabric of his gloves. Sakura still stood beside him, tears sliding silently down her cheeks.

_ There’s so much he never knew. I never told him how much he meant to me. How much he shaped the person I am today. This is all my fault. _

_ “With you is a good place to die.” If only. You gave everything up for me again, and I don’t even deserve it. _

He thought back to everything that had happened after the Kannabi mission - Rin, Minato, ANBU. Everything he’d ever done was for Obito, because of Obito. With his world completely turned around and torn apart all over again, Kakashi didn’t know what to do now. He wanted to curl up beneath the cold memorial stone and never wake up. Throw himself into the depths of his mind and never walk out, because what was left for him? His team didn’t need him anymore - they were all three of them more powerful than he ever was and had nothing left to learn from his bad decisions. His old classmates were either dead or dying on a battlefield along with the rest of his village, and he had no family left to speak of. Even the village people had always been something  _ other _ to him - an idea to protect, but not something he could feel or touch.  _ “Death surrounds the Hatake clan,” _ someone had said in the aftermath of Rin’s death, when everyone was still afraid of him.  _ “If they don’t kill themselves, everyone around them dies anyway.” _

Obito said that his story wasn’t over, that he still had work to do, but Kakashi couldn’t find it in him to believe that.  _ I’ll try to keep going _ , he promised. _ But I’m not sure that I can. _

Suddenly, snapping Kakashi out of his deepening spiral into the confines of his depression, the air above Obito’s ashes started to warp and burn with energy. There was a sudden jolt in his mind, and Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut against the burn of foreign chakra. He was suddenly standing in a bleak white nothingness, and when he looked down at his hands they were small and unscarred - the hands of a young jonin who thought he knew the way of the world. Oh, how wrong he had been.

In front of him, the air twisted again, and another boy in a blue jacket landed at his feet. “Obito?”

“Hey,” Obito said, standing up to smile at Kakashi. He appeared in his younger body as well, back from when he still needed to look down to meet his teammate’s eyes. “I came back to remind you not to give up yet. I know you want to, but… you can’t follow me yet. It’s not your time.”   
  


Obito smiled at him sadly, his face unscarred and less pale than it had been just moments before. His hair was dark once again, tinged with warmer hues at the edge of the light where it stuck up behind his goggles. 

“Obito, you -”

“Hey, I gave you my eye as a present for becoming a jonin right?” Obito interrupted him with a sharp glint in his eyes. “It would suck to just have it returned to me.”

Kakashi blinked, suddenly very aware of the powerless eye sitting in his head. But he could feel the fiery burn of Obito’s chakra all around him, sharpening his senses and giving him a newfound energy. Obito stood before him with his hands on his hips, a mischievous grin on his face. His eyes were still dark - it was a color Kakashi hadn’t seen in so long, he’d almost forgotten. It was like staring into the night sky. He wanted to hold onto it forever. 

Kakashi reached out and grabbed Obito by the arm, pulling him in and burying his face in his neck. Obito startled, not used to any sort of physical contact from Kakashi that wasn’t an attack, but after a moment he snaked his arms around to hug him back. It was the first time Kakashi had hugged someone in a very long time - in his mind, he could barely feel it, but he didn’t care. His hands were fisted in Obito’s jacket and he planned on never letting go. He could stay like this forever while the world died and fell away. Obito rested his head against Kakashi’s and neither of them said anything. 

“Kakashi… even while I was gone, I still missed you,” Obito said quietly. He didn’t sound sad anymore. “I used to visit the memorial stone and watch you talk to us… I didn’t think I cared anymore, but I guess a part of me still did, because I couldn’t stop growing little flowers everywhere.”

Kakashi huffed a laugh that ended halfway towards a sob. Tears were running down his face now, and he leaned more of his weight against Obito. 

“I can’t make it up to you anymore, but it is what it is,” said Obito, his voice muffled against Kakashi’s hair. Kakashi felt tears fall on the back of his neck.

He pulled back, but they didn’t break contact. Obito smiled at Kakashi and reached up to brush the tears away from his eyes, his hand lingering over the left side of his face. Obito was crying now too, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. They just looked at each other for a moment, before Kakashi moved his hand to cradle the back of Obito’s head, closing his eyes and bringing him closer to rest their foreheads together. He was met with the jarring edge of Obito’s goggles, which were sitting above his hitai-ate. They slipped down to land crookedly over his eyes.

“Ow,” Kakashi said dully, and Obito laughed, shoving the goggles back upwards. He raised a hand to do the same to Kakashi’s crooked hitai-ate, but instead ended up yanking his mask down and kissing him softly. 

Kakashi didn’t know what to do. Aside from the fact that he was kissing the boy he’d been in love with for almost 20 years, it was a new level of intimate that he’d never felt before. Breaking down in Obito’s arms and letting him see more than anyone else ever had in only a few minutes was... exhilarating. Obito’s hand was resting against his jaw, and the kiss was soft and light. It made Kakashi forget everything that had happened. Lost in his mind, it was a moment he wanted to relive for however long it took before he followed Obito into the world beyond. Eventually Obito pulled away, and Kakashi opened his eyes to find a pair of red stars staring back at him. 

“I love you,” he said quietly, his nose still brushing against Obito’s. “I always did.”

“I know,” Obito replied. His bright eyes flickered over Kakashi’s face, and he smiled again.

He took another step back, but his hands remained in Kakashi’s. “I can’t stay much longer... Oh, right - I told Naruto to become Hokage for me no matter what! What I meant was that I wanted him to be the  _ seventh _ Hokage. Should have mentioned that.”

Kakashi blinked again. 

“Kakashi, you should be the sixth. That’s the next chapter of your story, I think. Carry on with my old dream while I’m gone, if you can.”

“Obito, I can’t… I don’t think I can do it. I wouldn’t know where to start,” Kakashi protested. 

“Well, it’s like you said, isn’t it? Other people fill the holes in our hearts. You’re not alone.You still have your friends, and your team - and hey, it was my dream in the first place, so you’ll still have me to keep you going.” Obito grinned. Sparks were flying in Kakashi’s heart. “Give Konoha the future I never had.”

Kakashi could feel tears building in his eyes again. The light around Obito was growing stronger, and he knew he would be left alone in his mind again soon.

“Even though you haven’t officially started, I’m giving you an inauguration present,” said Obito, his voice echoing through Kakashi’s mind. “After all, you’re Kakashi of the Sharingan. I won’t watch you give that up so easily.”

With a final glow and the ghost of a hand brushing against his, Kakashi watched Obito fade away, and the light around him grew so intense he had to squeeze his eyes shut against it. When it died down, Kakashi could still feel the thrum of Obito’s chakra in his head, a reassuring burn behind his closed eyes. He opened them again, and found himself back in Kaguya’s dimension. Sakura had gone, and there was commotion behind him - his team was still fighting Kaguya and Black Zetsu.

  
_ Obito… _ He felt the sharingan in his eyes ( _ eyes _ , now - both of them burned with the energy of fallen stars, a mix of two chakras fanning a rising flame) and set his resolve.  _ I’ll do this for you, Obito. You’re right, they’re our future. I can still defend it.  _ We  _ can still protect it.  _

He turned around and faced the battlefield. Kaguya had become a monstrous entity that was closing in on the three shinobi - Naruto’s clones were scattered about, and even Sasuke looked more than a little worse for wear, with one eye shut tight. The double mangekyo allowed Kakashi to see everything precisely, and he could feel the burning chakra in his veins itching to be released. He felt no pain - everything around him was purely Obito, warm and fiery and dancing in between his own electricity. 

_ It’ll be nice to fight with you again - one last time. Here’s to everything, Obito. _

It was just like all those decades ago, when two boys faced each other in one of many mock battles before their sensei - there was a connection between them that stretched deeper than hand signs and tradition.

Red stars burned brightly as the flames rose around him. Forming from the combined energy of their lives and memories, the good and the bad, their Susanoo spread its wings and took flight. 

-

Kakashi had to wake up before dawn now, if he wanted to escape the Hokage Tower and Shikamaru’s wrath.  _ I swear, he’s the laziest shinobi I’ve ever met, and he  _ still _ manages to boss me around 24/7. _ Even though he was technically the Rokudaime and in charge of everyone in the village, Shikamaru, Genma, and Sakura basically guided him in every decision he made (if ‘guided’ meant being poked by a sharp, sometimes metaphorical stick in the direction he would have taken anyway). He had very little free time. Which was fine. He liked being busy.

There were still piles and piles of paperwork on his desk, which was definitely the worst part of his job. Kakashi couldn’t wait until Naruto took over his position and realized that it wasn’t all glory and fame. Which hopefully wouldn’t be long now - Kakashi was content being a stand-in until the younger generation, the better one, grew into their wisdom and were ready to lead them forward at full force. Many of them were already off to a good start. Sakura was the best medical ninja in the village, even rivaling Tsunade (which no one would dare say to her face, but since she was traveling outside the village again no one was ready to deny it either). Naruto was loved by everyone, and thankfully had grown out of his ego and received their love readily but humbly. He reminded Kakashi so much of Minato and Kushina. 

Sasuke had been the first order of business once everything had ended - but finding him and Naruto together in the ruins of the Valley of the End, Madara and Hashirama’s statues destroyed in their wake, Kakashi knew what needed to be done. Sasuke should have been imprisoned for the rest of his life or killed. Kakashi fought mercilessly for him to be pardoned, with Naruto and Sakura standing next to him before the village elders. He ended up leaving Konoha anyway, still missing an arm. Kakashi understood, and even though Naruto and Sakura were sad, they knew that’s how things would always be. Konoha hadn’t been a home to their friend in a very long time. Still, finding his students in a bloody heap on their battlefield once again, exhausted and missing limbs but still breathing, somehow restored some of the lost hope in Kakashi’s heart. They had succeeded where he never could, and it made him proud. 

The village needed rebuilding, of course. They had still been recovering from Pein’s attack when the war started, and now that it was all over and the Alliance was functioning slowly but surely, people were starting to reconstruct their old home. Kakashi passed by the frames of new buildings and small carts set up for food vendors whose shops had been destroyed, and felt the determination of Konoha settle warmly in his heart. 

The path he took was still so familiar, even if most of it had to be replaced. He was wearing his usual dark long-sleeved shirt and pants, minus the jacket or hat to avoid being easily recognized. He held an  _ Icha Icha _ volume in one hand and a full watering can in the other. The sun was barely rising over the peaks of the newly built houses around him as he passed under the archway that led to the training ground. 

The memorial stone remained unaffected by the war, largely because there were so many casualties that they thought it better to just make a new one. The old one still stood resolute in the forest, it’s dark surface absorbing the heat of the early morning sunlight. Obito’s name was no longer as sharp as it used to be - the effects of weather and Kakashi’s hand brushing over it from time to time - but still glinted slightly in the dawn.

Kakashi stopped in front of it and set the watering can down, tucking  _ Icha Icha _ into his back pocket. 

“Well, I finally managed to escape. Shikamaru’s a real bitch sometimes.” He closed his eyes and sighed. He didn’t come out here to talk to the ghosts as frequently anymore, and his ramblings were never as sad as they used to be. 

“I still think you would have been better at this than me, even the paperwork. It feels nice to get out of the office. But it’ll be Naruto up there soon anyway, so I’ll keep doing my part for now,” he started. “Speaking of which - Sasuke’s supposed to be back this morning. It’s been three weeks now and Naruto was practically bouncing off the walls when he gave me the letter. We’re all going for ramen later and if Shikamaru or Genma try and stop me I’ll fire both of them.”

Obito’s name made no reply. 

“Reconstruction is moving faster, but Yamato’s on a work-sleep schedule at this point. I could really use your mokuton right about now. And your sharingan. If I walk into another desk corner or fall down a flight of stairs I might have to wipe Genma’s memory. I can’t have him walking around ruining my reputation.”

He closed his eyes and smiled beneath his mask. It was on the busier, more aggravating days that he missed having Obito’s eye whirling in his head - walking around with two open eyes that weren’t the sharingan took a lot of getting used to. He didn’t feel too bad, though - most people had lost something in the war and adjusting to the new world was a slow process.  _ I’ll handle it better this time _ , he promised himself. 

Kakashi had thought for a long time that there was a gaping hole in his heart that couldn’t be fixed. He’d driven himself into the depths of depression and shinobi work only to crawl out even more damaged than before. It got better for a while, as Team 7 became a rising storm in their bustling village years ago. Sasuke’s defection, Naruto and Sakura leaving to find strength he couldn’t give them - that had been another blow to the heart, but he’d only slipped back into a quiet cycle of work followed by more work. Once Sasuke reappeared, and people started dying all over again, and the world was thrown into another war - if it hadn’t been for the people around him, Kakashi would have fallen back into darkness and old ghosts all over again. For a long time, he thought that maybe this was okay. He’d never be perfect, but things were… better.

He sighed. There wasn’t much more for him to say - he’d already spent the weeks after Obito’s final death standing by the stone and mourning his friend with even more grief than before. He’d told him about how he wasn’t sure how to keep going, how Obito shattered his heart into a million pieces several times over and only ended up hastily taping them back together after he was dead. How he still loved him, despite everything.

  
  
  


During the climax of the war after he found out Obito had been the cause of so much destruction and pain all over the world, Kakashi had been lost and hopeless, but he’d never questioned for a second that he was still in love with Obito. He’d fallen in love with him years and years before, but that Obito didn’t reveal himself again until the very end. He still thought about it a lot - Obito had kissed him, after all, during those last few seconds in his mind. That put a new twist on… well, everything. A large part of Kakashi, after having debated on it for weeks, settled on being angry and frustrated that he would never know what it meant for them in the long run. Leave it to Obito to accept his declaration of love and die immediately after. 

_ When I see you again, I’ll beat you into the ground, _ he thought affectionately.  _ But, until then… _

He picked up the watering can and began sprinkling the cool droplets over the small white flowers that had covered the ground around the stone. He had some in a pot in the tower, too, but most of the plants out here had been growing for years. It felt nice to take care of them.

_ I don’t even know if I have regrets anymore, _ he thought, mostly to himself.  _ What would have happened if things were different? Madara was wrong, I think - you can’t just rewrite history and shape it however you want. It doesn’t work like that. One thing leads to the next, and then… and then. I have a feeling my story’s almost over. Then again, maybe it never will be. Legacies are just epilogues, and even they become indistinguishable from the new chapters of someone else’s life. You were right, Obito - just a new chapter. I’m sorry that you’re not in it.  _

_ ‘If this world could give me one more good thing I’d want it to be you,’  _ he remembered.  _ There’s some irony there. Ah, well. It is what it is.  _

The flowers danced under the droplets of water that slid off their round white petals. Birds sang in the trees. The air was undisturbed in the early light of the rising sun, and the red stars stayed in the sky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tadaaaa!

**Author's Note:**

> look... if you had told me six months ago i'd spend two days writing a 34-page kakaobi fic instead of studying, i would have laughed in your face and asked what the hell you were talking about  
> and yet, here we are
> 
> (by the way - the titles are all from Stars by Sam Airey)


End file.
